I grew up in a series of ever-shrinking small towns. Last place I lived before moving to Calgary had a population hovering around 900. Suffice to say everyone in town knew everyone else. When fresh meat moved to town, it was news.
Somehow or other, my English teacher and my classmate in English 10 failed to put two and two together.
One day in class while we were supposed to be working on something independently, the teacher walked by our desks where we were talking about our weekends. My friend worked at the local greasy spoon and was discussing how weird he was. He used a number of words that I won't repeat here and finished up with a discourse on the lameness of the new guy's name: Fabian. Our teacher remarked that she too thought Fabian was a pretty lame name.
Sitting next to us one row over and totally within earshot the entire time was the new girl in our class who happened to have just started this week. Who woulda thunk it: two new people in town in the same week. You don't suppose...
"Fabian is my brother," she said aloud. The next thing you heard was the sound of my friend and the teacher each inserting their foot into their respective mouth.
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